Freshly Minted

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Recipe: Baked Eggplant Parmesan

So I'm not really sure if this counts as eggplant parmesan even though there's no actual parmesan cheese, but let's go with it.

I've never cooked an eggplant before, but I picked one up at the store this weekend and since I'll be out of town at the teambuilding event in Kansas City this week, I figured I better go ahead and cook it. I will definitely make this again, especially when it gets a little colder. I didn't even miss the meat in this meal.

Yield: 3 servings

Ingredients:
1 eggplant
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup italian style breadcrumbs
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 cups of pasta sauce (I use Newman's Own Sockarooni - it's a little spicy!)
3/4 cups italian cheese blend
5-6 fresh basil leaves, sliced
salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and place a sheet pan inside while the oven heats up.
2. Slice the eggplant lengthwise (long way) in half-inch thick pieces. You should get about 8 pieces out of one eggplant. Do not peel the eggplant!
3. Dip the eggplant slices into the egg and then into the breadcrumbs.
4. Coat the sheet pan in olive oil and place the eggplant slices on the pan. Bake for 15 minutes, flip the slices, and bake on the other side for 10 minutes.
5. In a small casserole dish (I used an 8x8 pan) sprayed with nonstick cooking spray, layer the pasta sauce, eggplant slices, and cheese (use 1/3 of the pasta sauce and 1/2 the cheese). Make another layer of pasta sauce and eggplant slices. Top with remaining pasta sauce and cheese. Lay the basil slices over the top and season with salt and pepper.
6. Bake for another 15 minutes at 475 degrees. Serve over spaghetti or with a salad (or both)!

Baked Eggplant Parmesan

Recipe to follow! Must eat first!

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Sunday, October 2, 2011

My Birthday!

So...I didn't meet my birthday goal. Wonk wonk. I totally lost my mind the past month with lots of traveling to New York and Kansas City and Arkansas and basically did nothing but eat and sit around. I honestly thought I had gained about 10 pounds, but it only turned out to be like 3 pounds...phew.

My birthday was fabulous with a delicious lunch at Breadwinners, happy hour with a lot of work friends, dinner at Goodfellas with more work friends, and then Banditos on Saturday. Mom even sent me beautiful flowers!

Of course I went to the gym this week trying to be good, and I went to a kickboxing class for the first time. I walked in and the instructor girl asked if anyone was new. It was only me and one other girl, and the advice we got was "Just keep punching." Okay...apparently everyone else had been in the class since Week 32 and they were on Week 47. Yikes. I stayed through the whole hour, but around 45 minutes something was feeling off. Since then my back has been hurting - pretty sure I pulled something, and I had to stay home from work Thursday afternoon and just lie on the floor. I did go work out this afternoon (just on the elliptical) but I'm definitely still feeling some pain after being up and about all day.

So a lot happened in September. I went to the U.S. Open in New York while on a business trip and got to see my favorite tennis players (Nadal, Roddick, and Isner) and bought a bunch of presents for all my jealous family members.

I went home to Arkansas for a weekend, hung out with Rivka at her awesome new place and ate lots of delicious indian food, and watched football with the family.

I went to Kansas City for work, conducted a training class, and made some new friends at our teambuilding venue. (Also ate delicious apple cider and apple cider donuts...I may have ordered both a cider slush AND a hot cider. No guilt. And I traipsed around a corn maze for 45 minutes, so they were also well deserved.)

The cutest earless goat you will ever see.

As far as goals...I'm pushing my ultimate goal out to December 31st. I haven't really lost anything since June, and I haven't tracked my calories or been to the gym (besides the kickboxing incident this week) so I'm rebooting. My only travel plans for October are the 11th-13th for our teambuilding event, and then at the end of the month I will be going to New Orleans for Halloween, woo!! I can't wait!

I revamped my goals/rewards sheet in case anyone is interested in reading the updated breakdown. November is going to be a lot of traveling (going to visit Meaghan, Alicia, and Johnny) so I'm pretty much hoping to break even over that month, and then go hardcore through December.

Hopefully more consistent updates now that I'm back in Dallas for a while!